AS PLEAS GO OUT, HUNT FOR CITRUS GIRL GOES ON (Most Wanted to air Jessica Lunsford case tonight)

CRYSTAL RIVER - Too weary to walk, the father and grandparents of a missing 9-year-old girl drove the 50 yards from their home to a bank of microphones and TV cameras.

"I really ... I really need as much help as I can right now," Mark Lunsford said between sobs. "I need my daughter home."

Jessica Marie Lunsford was reported missing Thursday morning. She was still missing when Lunsford, 41, and his parents addressed the media for the first time at 9 a.m. Friday. And she was still missing long after darkness fell and well-wishers held candles and prayed.

For the second straight day, searchers scoured the woods near the Lunsford home. The clues investigators did discover Friday led nowhere.

At 6 p.m., with rain spitting at volunteers and more than 100 worn-out local, state and national law officers, Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy called off the search for the night.

"Very frustrating," Dawsy said while a search helicopter buzzed overhead. "It's not because we haven't tried, as you can tell."

There were some developments Friday. The FBI found Jessica's mother, Angela Bryant, in Ohio, where she lives. Agents interviewed her and determined she was not a suspect, Dawsy said.

Law officers also said a doll was missing from Jessica's room. Dawsy didn't provide any more details.

Jessica stands 4 foot 11 and weighs 70 pounds. She is a Homosassa Elementary School third-grader.

She was last seen about 10 p.m., when her grandparents tucked her in to bed inside their mobile home in Homosassa, a small village south of Crystal River. Jessica lives there with her father and his parents, Archie and Ruth Lunsford.

"Come on, mama," Ruth Lunsford, 73, recalled Jessica telling her Wednesday night. "You got to put me to bed."

She told her grandmother, "I love you," and Ruth and Archie Lunsford retired in their room, which is near the front door.

Mark Lunsford spent Wednesday night at a girlfriend's house. He came home sometime before 6 a.m. and heard his daughter's alarm going off. He changed his clothes to get ready for work, and checked to see why Jessica hadn't turned it off.

She was gone. The front door was unlocked and there were no signs of forced entry.

The sheriff couldn't call the case an abduction, because there have been no real clues. But he said he does not think the girl wandered off alone, and a national missing child alert has been issued.

"She wouldn't go anywhere without telling us," Ruth Lunsford said. "When God made Jessie, he made an angel. We always called her princess. I know she's out there."

Searchers with bloodhounds and riders on horseback crisscrossed the mossy oaks, pines and sugar-sand mounds Friday looking for clues the rain didn't dissolve.

"We're looking for anything right now," Dawsy said when asked if he was looking for a body.

ATV riders combed the area. More than 30 members from a state Child Abduction Response Team also helped.

Convicted sex offenders living in the county were checked, sheriff's spokeswoman Gail Tierney said. The family's home computer was taken into evidence in case a predator had contacted Jessica online.

Faith Baptist Church, Jessica's small congregation, organized a candlelight vigil in the night and helped the Sheriff's Office hand out fliers in Homosassa neighborhoods in the day. The church's white vans drove members to different blocks. When volunteers stumbled on anything suspicious, like a shovel or toys in a truck, they contacted deputies, who marked the sites. One elderly volunteer walked into barbed wire and needed medical treatment.

"We just want to help any way we can," said Arnold West, who saw Jessica Wednesday, before she went missing. "This seems the only way to do it."

A crew from America's Most Wanted received special access to detectives and the family. The show plans to air a segment on Jessica tonight. More than 11 local and national television crews crowded the area, which was guarded by police tape. Residents came in a steady stream asking for fliers to hand out.

The afternoon was mostly a lull until Hillsborough County's sheriff called Dawsy, setting the media abuzz. Deputies had found a body in a lake there. Dawsy braced Mark Lunsford for the news. He did not tell the elderly Ruth.

"We went through a bit of an emotional roller coaster," Dawsy told reporters. "We have confirmed it is not our girl."

But if she went out by herself, why haven't they found her yet? It's not like there is a murderer lurking under every tree. The dog didn't bark...

Possibly there is a pedophile lurking around the corner.

While searching all of the news articles on the net about this case I came across some interesting things:

Grandmother: Ruth Lunsford
Address: Sonata Ave, Homosassa, FL

Searched the white pages and found their address and phone number.

Searched the website for sex offenders for the state of Florida, Citrus County and more specifically the town of Homosassa. For such a small population there were approximately 50 registered sex offenders in Homosassa alone. There were over 200 in Citrus county registered.

Browsing the sex offender webpages and cross referencing addresses against the Lunsfords I found one guy who lived in the street behind the Lunsford's trailer. In fact, according to his profile he about the same age as the grandfather. Makes you wonder if grandpa and him weren't buddies.

Looking at all of the offender's addresses I was able to find that 49 of the 50 registered criminals live within a 6 mile radius of the Lunsford.

It doesn't stop there...

A woman friend of the Ruth Lunsford, last name Armstrong, was on TV acting very hysterical. I didn't get a real good feel about this woman but it is only my personal opinion. But I looked up and cross referenced her address to the know sex offenders and found 3 of them within walking distance of her home.

Why would I suspect this woman as playing a role in this disappearance? I don't think she wittingly did but I believe from experience that she may know more about it than we have heard on the news.

When my son was 2 yrs old we put him in daycare at the home of a wonderful woman in our neighborhood. Unknown to us at the time her neighbor's son [they live behind the babysitters house approx. 100 feet away] had a criminal record for sexual offenses, he sodomized a little 6yr old boy over the summer several years before.

Had we known about the neighbor's son we would not have let my son be cared for by this great lady. But we soon found out a few years later when he was arrested for another crime dealing in child pornography.

This whole thing is keeping me awake at night.

As far as the dog not barking, if you listen to the 911 tape at http://wm.gannett.speedera.net/wm.gannett/wtsp/0502/26/jessica911.wmv you can hear the dog barking. It sounds like a medium size dog and it certainly didn't stop barking during the phone call to the police.

And where is grandpa in all of this? He hasn't been seen or heard from in any of the news reports.

Makes you think that something is really rotten in that household.

It's amazing what you can find on the net with a search engine and credit card.

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